


Seven Views of the Tay Bridge Disaster

by winterhill



Category: The Tay Bridge Disaster - William McGonagall
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Poetry, Inspired by Real Events, Poetry, Yuletide Treat, train crash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 10:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17078381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterhill/pseuds/winterhill
Summary: There’s something not right with the Bridge at the Tay —there’s bits of it strewn on the silt beneath.But there’s more than that — I’ve heard that the trainwas ablaze when it fell — that the wind was alive —that there were only forty six bodies —only forty six, on a loaded train. I ask you.





	Seven Views of the Tay Bridge Disaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lnhammer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnhammer/gifts).



I : 

The fire was low. “Bugger of a night for it,”  
I said, when they got the baton.  
The wind threshed the trees,  
shook the foundations of the houses. 

I swear none of what they say’s true. 

They got the baton. Went out for the bridge.  
I logged it in the ledger, straight —  
the fire was low, and I banked it,  
and from outside the wind howled,  
and you said you saw sparks  
like a great demon was striking a flint —  
the train was on the high rail,  
then it wasn’t. 

I swear none of it’s true. I turned to bank the fire. 

They didn’t die because of me. 

 

II : 

Mama said that we’d be in Edinburgh for the new year;  
I wanted to stay, though,  
back in London  
back in the old year.  
I missed London, and Katie; she showed me  
all the ways to braid clover into crowns,  
all the ways to convince Cook to give us honey-cakes,  
all the books that had magic worlds in them, and how to play that we were  
in the time of King Arthur, or in a magical school where we didn’t have  
to do lessons—  
and all the ways to skip out when Mama thought I was working. 

Mama said the storm wouldn’t hurt us. It was outside—  
the swaying of the train on the tracks was normal—  
usual, expected. It’s nothing to fear, she said, and pressed  
my head down in her lap, like I was a little baby.  
I’m not a baby,  
but she wanted me to be. 

I don’t remember falling into the water  
the track twisting  
the shock of the cold, knocking the breath from my lungs.  
I don’t remember,  
but my head was in Mama’s lap,  
and she was singing to me,  
and I decided not to cry—  
because I didn’t want her to worry—  
because we were sinking too fast to escape. 

 

III :

I never dreamed that I couldn’t —  
— couldn’t —  
— there was never any reason for me to doubt.  
The steam and coal that fired me  
was new, and good, and the humans were  
new, and good, and I trusted that  
their engineering was sound. 

It was still a long time off until the Titanic.  
Remember, the shock that was the Titanic —  
the lives, and the articles, and the panic and the questioning:  
How could this happen?  
Was it our engineering?  
Or our failure to respond?  
How will we know? 

Ha.  
Humans are fallible after all. 

So I raced the storm, joy in my heart.  
I’d outpace it, outrun the old year  
into the new.  
I raced the storm. The silvery Tay beneath me,  
shocked with lightning,  
bright under wind and rain and hail  
bouncing off my engine,  
carrying me down. 

I sank. 

They pulled me out, once it was over.  
The sun was bright. There were corpses inside me. 

I wanted to sink again,  
but they wouldn’t let me  
drown. 

 

IV :

The wreck fought us; or maybe it was the water  
or the wind — the wind’s a right bastard out there.  
When it’s not blowing through you there’s voices on it  
just out the edge of hearing, hands brushing your shoulders,  
people just out the edge of sight. 

The wreck fought us, and the wind fought us, and the  
fucking voices seemed to want to drag you down. 

There’s something not right with the Bridge at the Tay —  
there’s bits of it strewn on the silt beneath.  
But there’s more than that — I’ve heard that the train  
was ablaze when it fell — that the wind was alive —  
that there were only forty six bodies —  
only forty six, on a loaded train. I ask you. 

Hooking the lines for retrieval, I was under there  
with the ice water and the voices pulling on me, when I saw her.  
No helmet, no mask. Tiny. Dress and hair flowing round her like clouds.  
I swear she helped me secure the ropes — hands like  
dead things, and breathing underwater  
like it don’t bother her. She left as quick as she came —  
and I thought of my nan, who said there were others  
in these parts, and I thought of all them bodies,  
all them bodies we never found,  
and I din’t know if she’d come off of the train,  
or from the water itself. 

 

V :

You just don’t get the quality of sacrifices these days.  
They used to pay obesience more bloodily,  
and frankly I missed the power. Still —  
if there’s anything I’ve learned from this century,  
these people, it’s that you need to take opportunity  
where you find it. 

It’s an old word, hubris, but it’s perfect for these  
new centuries, this time when humans think they can  
close off the wind, harness the wind, ignore the wind.  
It just takes one poor element of design, one shift  
in the temperature, one opening for me to laugh,  
and to show that what cannot be seen can hurt you; what  
cannot be touched can tame you; what cannot be known  
can destroy you. 

(It’s a shame about the poem, but at least I come off  
spectacularly vengeful and violent — an old god,  
none of this forgiveness and beneficence —  
just raw determination, and success.)

 

VI :

It was the rhyme. The rhyme was the important thing.  
I mean — it gave a sense of the rhythm, and the  
broken meter was simply for dramatic effect.  
It was like a genius took me. I wrote, and the rhyme  
fell to me like rain, like a gift of the heavens. 

That’s my Art, and I’m sticking to it. 

I walked, late, home from the party —  
where they’d laughed, as they always laugh,  
and we’d rung in the new year. The wind  
called my name. I answered, sublime drunk  
hooting into the witching hour of the newborn day.  
While I was walking, they were dying,  
every one of them, plummetting into the river,  
every one of them sucking in water, as I breathed  
the ice wind, sharp in my senses, sharp in my lungs. 

I wish I were born in another time — where poetry  
was sung at banquet halls, and not  
for people who throw things, who misunderstand,  
who think that I am jesting. 

Those ancient poets — did they think of  
where they’d be read, and who would recite  
their words? I think not. And the people  
who throw vegetables, and who say I  
should not write — do they think of who  
will read my words in future, when their  
lives are consigned to dust? You’re  
still reading my work, and your heart  
beats and your lungs breathe and you exist  
long after my death. 

You’re still reading my work. 

Aren’t you? 

 

VII :

There’s a new bridge, but it’s not  
new-new, not so you’d notice, and  
podcasts make fun of the poet, and  
the old pylons are visible at low tide. 

She’s been alive a long time now,  
she’s been here, and waiting; she  
pulls suicides from the current, she  
leaves her skin on the shore when  
she walks in the human world. 

Everywhere in the world, there has  
been a tragedy. Every atom was in  
someone when they died; every  
location was the point of a parting,  
be it a plant withering to dust, or a  
great poet passing into the night.  
The world is witness to our sorrow. 

It’s new year soon. Your lungs are  
full of air, not water; you do not have  
to leave your skin when you walk on land.  
You do not have to write, possessed,  
you do not have to steal sacrifices  
to make up for those ungiven. 

It’s a new year soon. Tell me,  
what will you do with it?


End file.
